The Quest for Salvation
by Rev. Theophous Reagans
Text: He has shown you, O man, what is good, And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because God has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, God has sent me to proclaim freedom
for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Luke 4:18.
Last year our Global Ministries young adults met with Dr. Allan Boesak to discuss liberation theology and to raise questions about its application to their faith journeys. During the discussion with Dr. Boesak, one of the young adults asked him a question about Christian involvement with the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Question: “Dr. Boesak how do we young adults participate in the struggle for social justice and yet remain Christian?”
Dr. Boesak responded: “We would all do well to remember that the world belongs to God. Our calling as Christians is to dare to name and confess God from within our politics, from the heart of our commitment to justice. Naming God in our lives and in our politics is naming the hope that never dies, the future that still exists, that is waiting to be claimed by all of us on behalf of all of us, the love that will not let us go. Naming God means standing where God stands, fighting for whom God fights—the children, the women, and the undefended.”
There is much biblical support for Dr. Boesak’s statement that we, the church, should be committed to justice for the children, the women and all of those who are oppressed and undefended. That support is readily found in the Gospel of Luke. Most of the time in Luke’s gospel, the focus of salvation is on the quality of life that God enables people to have in the present. Many scholars have said that Luke envisions salvation as primarily liberation (4:18). People need to be set free from certain things in order to experience life as God intends. Some people are ill and need to be healed; others are possessed by demons and need to be exorcized. Luke’s Gospel uses the Greek word for salvation “soteria” (deliverance) in describing what Jesus does for these people (e.g., 6:9; 8:36; 48, 50; 17:19; 18:42). This deliverance theme is reinforced throughout the text. For example, when Jesus tells Zacchaeus that salvation has come to his house (19:9), his main point is probably not that Zacchaeus will go to heaven when he dies but rather that Zacchaeus has been set free from slavery to mammon (unrighteousness that is at odds with God, like material wealth) and is now able to experience life as God intends.1
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is born a savior (2:11), and he saves people throughout his life on earth. Jesus even says the reason he has come is to seek out people needing salvation and save them (19:10)—that is, set them free from whatever is preventing them from experiencing life as God intends.
Biblical support for the belief that the church should be committed to justice can also be found in the scriptural references found in the Belhar Confession of faith by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church. Here are some excerpts from the Belhar Confession:
We believe,
that God has revealed God’s self as the one who wishes to bring about justice and true peace among people (Isaiah 42:1-7);
that God in a world full of injustice and enmity, is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged (Luke 6:20-26);
that God calls the church to follow him in this, for God brings justice to the oppressed and gives bread to the hungry (Luke 4:16-19);
that God frees the prisoner and restores sight to the blind (Luke 22);
that God supports the downtrodden, protects the stranger, helps orphans and widows and blocks the path of the ungodly (Psalm 146);
that for God pure and undefiled religion is to visit the orphans and the widows in their suffering (James 1:27); that God wishes to teach the church to do what is good and seek the right (Micah 6-8);
that the church must therefore stand by people in any form of suffering and need, which implies, among other things, that the church must witness against and strive against any form of injustice, so that justice may roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:14-15, 23-24);
that the church as the possession of God must stand where the Lord stands, namely against injustice and with the wronged; that in following Christ the church must witness against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others (Psalm 82:1-5, Leviticus 19:15).
Therefore, we reject any ideology which would legitimate forms of injustice and any doctrine which is unwilling to resist such an ideology in the name of the gospel.
The Belhar Confession supports the position that followers of Christ should partner with God in creating a more just world. The Confession supports the notion that the quest for salvation is a quest for freedom—a quest for liberation from any form of injustice.
Wrestling with evil, loss, and violence is not simple. The quest for health and wholeness, for salvation, can seem difficult on a daily basis. Micah, the gospel of Luke and much later, the Belhar Confession point to Jesus as the way of salvation, and I believe this path is not only found by following Jesus’ example, but is also found when we participate in a seeking community that “makes a way out of no way.” This community can be found in a dancing circle, a coffee house, a book group, a global exchange, a prayer band, a mission circle, or in a nonprofit.2 What are we doing in our quest for salvation? Are we participating in a community that is seeking to make a way out of no way, a community that acknowledges our ancestors and God? Are we participating in a community that answers God’s call that we partner with God to transform our world?
Prayer: God I pray that we would daily seek to follow the way of salvation—that we might daily work with our community to wrestle with and combat evil, loss, violence, and oppression. I pray that we remember that we are warriors and liberators and that we remember your call for us to partner with you to name and confess you from within our politics, in all aspects of our lives, from the heart of our commitment to justice.
Amen!
1 Powell, Mark Allan, Introducing the New Testament, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), pages 161-165.
2 Coleman, Monica A., Making a Way Out of No Way, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), page 170.
